


Radio Noise

by pied_pollo



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, Dissociation, Episode: s13e01 Wheels Up, Gapfill, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Obscure Plants, Overstimulation, PTSD, PTSS, Poor Reid was still wearing his trial suit, Prison, Rated S for Spoilers, Sad Spencer Reid, Scene Breakdown, friendship ended with grammar now commas and run-ons are my best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pied_pollo/pseuds/pied_pollo
Summary: He takes a book from off the table and throws it violently at the wall. It’s not like him, but then again, he hasn’t been exactly in-character these past few months.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 109





	Radio Noise

There’s an uncomfortable ringing in the air, like Spencer’s apartment is buzzing with tension. The hum bores deep behind his eye and fills his brain with static. It’s hard to hear what Morgan is saying over the white noise, but Spencer forces himself to smile and nod anyway.

He should feel good. He should feel _free_ again. But for some reason, there’s a cold stone in his gut that tells him something very bad is about to happen.

As if on cue, his phone buzzes. It’s Garcia: _HOSPITAL ASAP NOW._

The stone makes its way up his throat. Spencer jumps out of his seat on the couch and the hum behind his eye pulses in tandem with his frantic heartbeat. He knocks over a cup of coffee on the table, and the clatter makes him clap his hands over his ears and bend over.

Morgan’s hand is on his shoulder, and he’s saying something, but Spencer doesn’t hear it and can’t talk so he hands over his phone. Morgan reads the message and grabs Spencer’s shoulder to pull him back upright. He wraps his arms around him in what should be a comforting hug, but it feels constricting and Spencer squirms out of the embrace.

His ears finally undam and Morgan’s voice floods his ears, hurried and clipped with anxiety: “--go, _go!_ Fill me in when you get there!”

Spencer chokes out: “My mom--”

“--I’ll take her home, come on, they need you--”

“--Thank you, Morgan--”

“--Later, kid, go help--”

Then Spencer blinks and he’s on the road, rushing at 80 miles an hour, his foot hard on the gas pedal. At one point he thinks someone pulls him over, but he thrusts his badge in their face, shouts something about an emergency, and the officer lets him careen the rest of the way to the hospital.

He slams his hands on the nurses’ station, eyes wild and asking if any vehicle accidents had arrived, and if anyone is dead, please say no one is dead because they _cannot die_ , and the nurse looks frightened. Whatever she says is drowned out by the return of Spencer’s headache, back with a vengeance. He clutches the edge of the counter and groans because his stomach is swirling and there’s something jackhammering away behind his eye, but before he can fully collect himself there are paramedics rushing through the door and all that matters now is making sure his team is okay.

\----------

Luke is there now, beckoning him into Rossi’s room. Spencer still can’t really hear; his ears are ringing, but things are calming down now. He's is about to release the breath he had been holding in, but suddenly Rossi tells him he’s back on the team. Spencer protests, but it's no use; Rossi is adamant, so Spencer finds himself promising to get Bears tickets from Rossi’s file cabinet to help take Scratch down. It's not until after the rush that he finally realizes he doesn’t know where Emily is.

\----------

He’s sitting in Luke’s car because Luke won’t let him drive. It’s understandable; Spencer doesn’t know what he looks like right now, but it’s probably nothing good. He’s aware that he still has his trial suit on, and it feels hot, too hot, and too cramped in the confined car space. He tugs at the collar, breathing raggedly. Luke starts to talk but whatever he says is lost in the piercing tinny, and Spencer feels detached from his body, an outsider, a ghost eavesdropping on a one-sided conversation. 

The pounding in his head becomes a dull ache as he dissociates. Spencer is vaguely aware of Luke taking one hand off the steering wheel to push his head between his knees, and he spends the rest of the drive staring at the ground and trembling from the rolling nausea and muted anxiety that threatens to swallow him whole.

\----------

He comes back around when the car screeches to a stop. Spencer shoves the door open and stumbles from the blood rush but storms up the stairs to the BAU, ignoring Luke’s sympathetic frown when he has to push the door open for him.

“I can’t arrest him,” Spencer blurts out.

Luke furrows his brow. “What?”

“Scratch,” Spencer explains breathlessly. “The second I see his face, _I am going to kill him_. I tried to tell Rossi not to put me back on the team--you heard me.”

“Yeah, I did.” Luke raises his hands as if steadying an unstable horse--maybe he is.

There’s a cloudy spot in Spencer’s line of sight, and he presses his hand into his eye to try and make it go away. Instead of disappearing, the blur spreads, a kaleidoscope of colors shifting and rolling across his peripheral vision like a lava lamp. 

His head is banging, and everything is too overwhelming, and he just needs a moment to _breathe,_ but it’s too late because he made a choice. A choice to rejoin the team, to find Emily--Emily, who made the choice to fake her death but she also didn’t have a choice in the matter--and him, Spencer, who is making this choice right here, right now, even though he doesn’t have much of a say either, but nevertheless both of them _made a choice and what if that means I don’t get out alive?_

\----------

There aren’t any Bears tickets in Rossi’s file cabinet. When Luke twists the key and opens the drawer the rest of them are greeted with dozens of manilla folders, all with _Scratch_ scrawled on the tabs in Stephen’s and Emily’s handwriting.

Spencer takes a stack of folders and pores over them at his desk. Next to him, Luke closes his second folder and Spencer grits his teeth because he’s on the fourth which means he isn’t going fast, and he _needs_ to go fast because it’s his job to go fast, but suddenly something catches his eye:

_Hondura connection is a go. Hunting down all leads to B-CAP in DC. Thanks, AH._

He shows the others.

“Prentiss texted Hotch?” Simmons asks.

“According to Stephen’s documentation, yes,” Spencer replies. He uncaps a marker to rewrite the message on the board.

“It must’ve been a coordinated attempt to share intel. Would Hotch have exposed himself like this?”

Spencer almost laughs as he continues to write. “No, and neither would she. I mean, she wouldn’t rely on a hackable app and she sure as _hell_ wouldn’t write ‘AH’ in a text--that defeats the purpose of compartmentalizing the investigation!”

“It was a smoke screen,” Garcia realizes.

“Stephen had a background in counterintelligence,” Simmons says, “he must have designed this. He faked the entire Hotch side of the conversation to entice Scratch to make a move.”

“The size and scale of which indicates desperation,” Spencer counters, “a desperation he hasn’t shown after a year of hiding, so why now?”

“‘AH’ is a pretty big red flag.”

Garcia flips through the rest of the text transcripts and shakes her head. “They used Hotch’s initials in other texts before.”

Spencer flaps his hands wildly, trying to bring his mouth up to speed with his brain. “Then they found something else, something they knew would rattle him.” He jams his finger at the whiteboard. “‘B-CAP’. What’s ‘B-CAP’?”

“Geography, maybe,” Simmons suggests, but the rest of his words are cut off by a loud buzz. The air vibrates like someone is striking a tuning fork by Spencer’s ears, causing waves to appear in front of him. The prickling pain makes him feel like his brain is experiencing paresthesia, and even though Spencer knows that only happens to the extremities he digs his palm into his eye to get rid of whatever’s eating away at his skull.

B-CAP. B-CAP. Think. Think. Think.

He comes up empty. The frustration makes his headache worse.

“I can’t see it,” Spencer whispers.

Garcia puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Hey, no,” she coos. “Why don’t we kick it over to the team? Maybe they can suss out--”

Spencer turns around and pushes her, shaking his head rapidly. Actually, his entire body is shaking. “No,” he gasps, “no, there’s no time. Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out. Sorry.” Spencer grabs Simmons by the arm and ushers him to the door as well. “You, too. I’m sorry, but get out.”

“Let me get this and then I’m gonna go--”

“--What? Ok, ok--”

“-- _Get out_ \--”

It’s the first time Spencer didn’t have to have a door opened for him, but he doesn’t think about that until later.

\----------

Honduras. The Republic of Honduras, Central America. Population of 9.588 million. Bordered by Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Honduras. Agricultural. Devastated by Hurricane Mitch. Primarily Mestizo.

B-CAP. B-CAP. B. C. A. P. Boulder County AIDS Project. British Code of Advertising Practice. Building Codes Assistance Project. No. No. No. Not an organization. A thing. A noun. A person. _Hunting down all leads to B-CAP in DC._

B-CAP. It’s like a section name in the public library. Science Fiction. Biography. Poetry. No. No. No.

CAP. It’s like a dictionary. Capulet. Captain. Capaciousness. Capacity. Capitulate. Capybara. Capricorn. No. No. No. Cap. Cap. Cap. Cap. Cap. No. No. No. No. No.

Scratch. Scratch. He thinks about Scratch and he scratches his head, no, rakes his hands across his scalp because he can’t think. He can’t think. He can’t think.

He takes the folders from the shelves and flips all of them open on the table. Capital. Capitol. Captor. Capable. He is not capable of this. He can’t do this. He can’t do this and he hates that he has to and he hates people always relying on him to get things done except he doesn’t trust anyone else to get things done either so what’s the point of trying?

Trying. Trying. He’s trying. He never usually has to try. It’s new. It’s bad.

Capsize. Caper. Capsule. The room is too small and it feels encapsulating and Spencer tugs harder on his collar, there’s sweat running down his face and it shouldn’t be this easy for him to get overwhelmed.

Back to Scratch. Cap. Capture. Scratch. Scratch captured Emily who is dying right now if he doesn’t think. Think. Think. Scratch. Drugs. Scratch. He grips his arm tightly and yanks up his sleeve to look at the scars on the inside of his elbow. Drugs. Scratch. He digs his nails into the scabs. Drugs. Scratch. Cap. B-CAP. Bravo, Charlie, Alpha, Papa. B-CAP. BCAP. BACP. BCAP. BPCA. CAPB. CPBA. CBAP. APBC. ABCP. ACPB. PBCA. PCAB. PABC. Not an anagram. 23116. Add the numbers and it's 22. Add the digits and it's 13. Multiply it and it's 36. Not a number. Binary code. No. Caesar cipher. No. Atbash. No. Morse. Definitely not. Drugs. Scratch. Honduras. Culture. Agriculture.

Agriculture. Plants. Cap. No plants start with “cap”. B-CAP. Short for something. Something. Something. He hates something, because having something is the same thing as having nothing, but he needs something, but he has nothing and no one, no one can help him, he’s stuck here, and it’s too hot, too tight, too _everything_ even through he still has nothing, and he doesn’t know what’s happening anymore, and he can’t breathe because his heart is pounding, and everything feels hazy even though he isn’t on drugs scratch drugs scratch scratch he’s scratching his arm until it bleeds and the lava lamp in his brain spills out of his eye onto the floor and his stomach sloshes with magma, there’s pink and green spots flooding his vision and he’s hallucinating, no, experiencing auras, because that’s what happens when he gets a migraine, but now he isn’t so sure, sure, _are you sure you’re not high right now?_ And someone replied in Spanish, Spanish, Honduras, Agriculture, Spanish and Portuguese explorers took something to South America in the 16th century, not drugs but not legal either, legal, not like a trial, not like jail because he wasn’t guilty but he feels guilty because Emily is dying while he tries to think of Spanish and Portuguese agriculture in the Honduras, so he is guilty of letting her die right now, he confesses to that, _he confesses and he ought to be buried alive_ , it’s been a while since he thought about that and it’s a surprise he hasn’t scorned religion entirely, religion, religion, his stomach is twisting and he can’t see around the colors and the ringing raises in pitch to screaming radio noise in his ears and he feels sick and he’s hallucinating like the plant like the agriculture brought to South America in the 16th century, used for religious purposes as well as drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, and it clicks.

_Banisteriopsis caapi_. B-CAP.

Spencer grips the table and squeezes his eyes shut.

He pulls down his sleeve.

He takes in a shaky breath. Opens his eyes. Looks at the clock.

And then he takes a book off the table and throws it violently at the wall.

It’s not like him, but then again, he hasn’t been exactly in-character these past few months.

\----------

By the time they make it to Scratch’s warehouse, Spencer can’t see anything out of his right eye. His gun trembles in the death grip he has on it.

Something moves. Spencer catches a glimpse of a shadow flitting across the ground. He lifts his weapon.

_The second I see his face, I am going to kill him._

He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes harshly through his mouth.

_You do things in prison you’d never dream of doing in the outside world._

He feels violent. He feels shaky. He feels scared.

_I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own mind._

He puts his finger on the trigger.

_Front sight. Trigger press. Follow through._

And then he turns the corner and Emily is there.

The static disappears.

“Put your gun down, damn it!” Emily hisses.

“Where’s Scratch?” he whispers.

“Upstairs. Simmons and Alvez can go around and box him in.”

“I need to find him,” Spencer growls. It’s the only thing he’s sure of.

He wants to end this. He needs to end this.

But then Emily grabs his arm, and Spencer hesitates.

_Yeah, I think you really liked hurting those men._

“No, no, no,” she begs him, “Spence, please.”

_And once you've crossed that line, you can't ever go back._

Spencer’s heartbeat pulses rapidfire in his ears.

_You can't ever go back._

He looks into Emily’s eyes and starts to pull away, but then she sobs: “I need someone I know is real.”

_You mourned the loss of a friend. I mourned the loss of six._

He can’t let that happen again. He can’t let her be alone again.

He can’t.

So he doesn’t.

_You can't ever go back._

Emily pulls him into a tight embrace. Spencer hugs her back.

_You can't ever go back._

The buzzing doesn’t leave. But he can hear again.

_You can't ever go back._

_Watch me._

**Author's Note:**

> poor reid was still wearing his trial suit asdfghjk


End file.
